Now it's official. On April 11, the Attorney General's office released a memo calling on all federal prosecutors to:

"...consider for prosecition any case involving unlawful transprtation of harboring of aliens. or any other conduct prescribed pursuant to 8 U.S.C. Section 1324..." (Italics added.)

(See ilw.com news item April 12.)

As I have mentioned below and in previous Immigration Daily comments, and will explain further in forthcoming comments, this refers to INA Section 274, an extremely broad statute which makes it a felony for anyone, including a US citizen, to "assist" someone who is remaining in the US without permission.

Conceivably, this could include providing legal advice, medical assistance, advocacy or help of any kind to anyone who might turn out to be or could be suspected of being an unauthorized immigrant.

It could also, not inconceivably, include failing or refusing report such a person to ICE for arrest and deportation.

Is America on the way to its own version of the 1936 German Nuremberg laws which made it a crime for non-Jewish Germans to engage in certain types of activities or associations with Jews?

Will the "New Era" of Donald Trump which Sessions mentioned in his April 11 Arizona speech start to resemble the "New Order" in Germany 80 years ago?

My original comment follows:

In an April 11 speech at the Mexican border, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who as a fiercely anti-immigration Senator, issued an immigration "Handbook" for Congressional Republicans in January 2015 containing high praise for the 1924 Immigration Act which excluded most of the world from immigrating to the US except for people from Northern Europe, announced that:

What, other than the highly unfortunate resemblance between "New era" and the "NewOrder" announced by the German National Socialist government some 80 years ago, exactly does this mean?

One thing that Sessions made clear is means as that unauthorized immigrants themselves are not the only targets of Trump's immigration actions, but that American citizens who "harbor" or "transport" them will be prosecuted.

The reference is to INA Section 274, an extremely broad statute which, while primarily directed against immigrant smugglers, also make it a federal felony to "harbor" or "assist" an authorized immigrant in remaining in the the United States.

As the above Phoenix New Times report quotes Jeanne Atkinson, Director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), as saying, the statute "applies to everyone" who might provide help.

As Atkinson puts it:

"You could be talking about a grandma taking a grandchild to the doctor."

The same article also quotes Brent Wilkes, executive director of LULAC as follows:

"They're trying to criminalize and make it a felony to pursue the American dream."

The above report also states, with regard to Wilkes' comment:

"The intent of going after people who harbor or transport undocumented immigrants is to intimidate them and increase fear among the undocumented community, he [Wilkes] said."

One might add that it is not only immigrants who could have a great deal to fear from Sessions' threat to launch criminal prosecutions under INA Section 274.

Any American who lends any kind of assistance to, or even associates with, someone who might turn out to be in the US without legal status, or who fails to report someone whom he/she knows or has reason to suspect may be here illegally to ICE for deportation could also. according to the language of the statute, be subject to prosecution.

In that case, comparisons between Trump's police state New Era and the New Order in Germany eight decades ago would not be by any means accidental or inappropriate.
______________________________

Roger Algase is a New York immigration lawyer who has been helping mainly skilled and professional immigrants receive work visas and green cards for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Roger's email address is algaselex@gmail.com

The Department of State has just issued the May 2017 Visa Bulletin. This is the eight Visa Bulletin of Fiscal Year 2017. This blog post analyzes this month's Visa Bulletin.

May 2017 Visa Bulletin

Final Action Dates

Applications with these dates may be approved for their Green Card (Permanent Residency card).

Employ-
ment
based

All Charge-
ability
Areas Except
Those Listed

CHINA-
mainland
born

INDIA

MEXICO

PHILIPPINES

1st

C

C

C

C

C

2nd

C

08FEB13

22JUN08

C

C

3rd

15MAR17

01OCT14

25MAR05

15MAR17

01JAN13

MU Law Analysis

All Other: The EB-2 has been current for many years. The EB-3 progression continues, moving an additional one month. Consular processed EB-3 are effectively current.

China: The China EB-2 date again moved up, but only a few weeks. The China EB-3 again date progressed about six weeks. This was a smaller progression than the last few Visa Bulletins. The China EB-3 continues to have a more favorable date than EB-2, as a result of many historical Chinese EB-3 workers "upgrading" their applications to EB-2.

India: EB-2 India moved up about one day, which is the first one day progression that I can recall. EB-3 India stayed the same, unfortunately. Mexico: Mirrors All Other in all aspects.

Philippines: EB-3 moved ahead by nearly four more months. The Philippine EB-3 number essentially cleaned out all of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 EB-3 visas in about 6 months. This is even more positive than we expected. (Our note from September 2016: "This is consistent with internal MU Law analysis which sees this category progressing into 2013 by the Summer of 2017."). Please read the Musillo Unkenholt Healthcare and Immigration Law Blog at www.musillo.com and www.ilw.com. You can also visit us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Federal law enforcement agencies are making more arrests for immigration-related offenses and fewer arrests for other types of offenses – including drug, property and gun crimes – than they were a decade ago, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Half (50%) of the 165,265 total arrests made by the federal government in fiscal 2014 – the most recent year for which statistics are available – were for immigration-related offenses, such as crossing the border illegally or smuggling others into the United States. A decade earlier, immigration-related offenses accounted for 28% of all federal arrests.
At the same time, arrests for drug crimes fell from 23% of the total in 2004 to 14% in 2014. Those for supervision violations, such as probation or parole infractions, fell from 17% to 14%. Arrests for property crimes, including fraud and embezzlement, declined from 11% to 8%. And arrests for weapon offenses, such as possession of an unregistered firearm, fell from 7% to 4%.